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| Cliffs of Moher Warning |
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| Eel Fossils |
Sept. 1, 2007- B&B Blues
I won’t try to explain AOL but we tried to find an Internet
Café today. We don’t have access at our B & B. We were able to get on our
Todaho account on AOL then the Ciminis got onto their accounts. When we tried
to get into Todaho again we couldn’t. I had to send it from my tobykhorowitz
account. Go figure.
Our B & B. The wife appeared today. She’d minding the
grandchildren in Cork. By comparison he’s the friendlier of the two. David went
in to introduce himself; she looked up at him and said, “O.K” then went back to
watching TV. I’m into what will probably be a long paragraph on the B & B
so if you don’t want to read it skip ahead. I stood in the bathroom taking
notes this morning. The fluorescent light over the sink is not working. The
ceiling bulb is dim but fortunately there’s a big window. The spiders scuttling
across the ceiling don’t seem to mind the dim lighting. Perhaps they find it
romantic. We were right about the shower. They tried to scald us. It was
boiling hot at first then went to freezing with hardly a turn of the knob. It
needed a period of adjustment to find a comfortable level on its own before
settling down. I suspected that whoever cleaned the shower stall before we came
didn’t look higher than the floor. Although things appear to be clean there was
a used shampoo packet in the soap dish. There was no soap for the shower. The
hotel-sized bar on the sink was already unwrapped for our convenience or the
convenience of the previous tenant. There are no towel bars nor are there any
hooks or shelves in the bathroom. Our toiletry bags are hanging on hangers
hooked over the shower bar. And for a special surprise in the middle of the
night when we didn’t turn the light on in the bathroom, the wooden toilet seat
is cracked. That’s it for the bathroom.
The room itself has a double and a twin bed. Our bags are on
the twin. There are no pictures on the walls and no shelves in the room. Our
closet is filled with blankets, which came in handy last night. There’s central
heating but it’s off for summer no matter how low the temperature drops. I
slept in my robe with three wool blankets on top of me and David cuddling to
keep me warm. There’s enough toilet paper in our closet to supply all of
Ireland during a plague of dysentery. It could also be used as sponges to soak
up the blood spilled from falls down the killer steps. The carpeting is
conveniently blood red. The steps appear unexpectedly in the hall just outside
our door. The carpet is patterned to help camouflage the fact that there are
steps there. I took all three of them in one bound the first time I left the
room and have taken it upon myself to remind everyone to “mind the steps” each
time we leave. Adding to the ambiance, the walls are thin. I could hear a
Cimini sawing away last night and had to use earplugs.
Cliff Hanging
I managed to get rolling this morning after itemizing all of
the above lest I omit any fascinating detail and deprive you. We had clear
directions to the Cliffs of Moher but David always thinks we’re going in the
wrong direction while the three of us assume we’re on target. He decided that
the tour bus in front of us had to know where it was going and followed it. It
reminded me of the time his father was lost and followed a line of cars
because, “They looked like they knew where they were going.” They did and he
ended up in a cemetery at a funeral. The bus did great until it took a turn
that didn’t jive with our map. David kept the faith until road markers and we
three prevailed.
As we wandered onto the right track we noticed that the
sheep were still asleep. I pondered what they counted in order to get to sleep.
Perhaps they count lost tourists. There’s no lack of them. We spoke to our son
Daniel today and he remarked that we spent most of our time getting lost. It’s
true but that’s when we have lots of laughs. Tonight Karen wanted to load up on
“Digestive Biscuits” for the trip. They’re very tasty cookies and we don’t know
what they have to do with digestion. Tesco is a grocery chain in Ireland and
we’d seen a Tesco sign. We found the sign again but couldn’t find the entrance
into the parking lot. We did get lost in the wrong lot and David made several
false turns before we found the exit. We circled the block three times until we
realized Tesco was closed. David said the only way we could find it would be to
go to the B & B, find the roundabout, and start all over again. There was
another grocery open and when we went there they told us that the Tesco is in a
mall and not visible from the street.
We did get to the Cliffs but they were obscured by fog. It
was “misting” out so we geared up and set out for the Visitor’s Center. I must
confess I had on five layers having been warned about the wind, rain, and cold.
I had on a silk t-shirt, long-sleeved cotton shirt, sweater, windbreaker, and
intermediate winter jacket with hood. I also had a scarf around my neck. The
Visitor’s Center is unobtrusively built into a hill and we huddled there with
the other tourists waiting for the fog to lift. I decided to hurry it up by
standing outside and doing tai-chi breathing while visualizing inhaling the fog
and exhaling the warmth of the sun. It worked.
The sky cleared and we had balmy blue skies and sun. I was sweating and
shedding layers like crazy.
Walls on the farms in the area of the Cliffs are built from
slabs of stone piled one on the other not the usual whole round stones we’re
used to seeing. At the Cliffs, large slabs of slate stand on end and form the
walls. Eel fossils are plentiful in the slate, which leads me to this theory:
St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland and into the sea. That’s where all
those eels came from. Works for me.
The wind was blowing and a woman was playing the harp. The
blue skies beckoned us along the path and lured our gaze to the 700-foot drop
to a cobalt sea. Birds flew at eye level then teased us by dropping away to
their cliff dwellings below. We were surrounded by the power and majesty of
nature and then there was the email kiosk where tourists could send photos of
themselves at the site. Commercialization is alive and well.
The Irish Coast Guard was all around us. They were
rappelling down the cliffs when I asked a park worker if it was practice. He
thought it was since there were no helicopters or boats involved. He said that
they’d lost three people over the side that year “that they know of.”
Sea Worthy
There are ferry rides to the Aran Islands that we wanted to
go on but they stayed on the island longer than we wanted. We opted for an hour-long
cruise below the cliffs to get a different perspective. We had to kill a couple
of hours so grabbed a pub lunch in the nearby town of Doolin whose existence
seems to be to feed and house tourists to the Cliffs.
A good thing it was that we had time to digest our meal.
This was the Nazca Lines debacle for David. I’d gotten nauseous on a flight in
Peru to see the lines in the desert made by “aliens” and he almost gave it up
at the Cliffs of Moher. He clutched his plastic barf bag like it was a life vest.
I went to the rear deck to take photos and got queasy from the diesel fumes so
joined him in suffering on the trip back to the dock. I didn’t take my own bag.
I thought we could share. Amazingly, he proudly walked up the gangplank
clutching his empty bag.
At dinner Karen who’s a therapist with a PhD in psychology
watched as parents permitted rowdy children to wreak havoc in the restaurant.
It was reassuring to see living proof that she will have clients in the future.
Somewhere in America parents are also messing up their kids.
It’s true confession time. We lost our Heritage Pass a few
days ago. We only missed out using it on a couple of attractions but our senior
rates kicked in and saved us some money. The Ciminis are giving theirs to us
since they leave for home tomorrow. We’ll drop them off at the Shannon Airport.
I think that airport was in search of a city and called it Shannon. We can’t
find any city and it’s not mentioned in Fodor’s. We tried to find the City
Center tonight and all the signs led us back to our B & B.
Happy Labor Day weekend to you all.
Toby
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